#i usually just voice act text-only characters like reading VNs with friends

[declawedwildcat]

Are podfics something people enjoy? If I recorded audiobooks of my own stories is that something anyone would find useful to have?

[doubleddenden]

So, day 1 with Digimon Survive

It's a fun experience. It's not quite what I'm used to from the franchise or from games in general, but it is fun and new yet... nostalgic somehow. I mean aside from Agumon and the rest of the typecast characters. There's something about the game itself that feels new but also reminds me of something long forgotten. Probably just that I've been waiting 4 damn years for it.

But anyway, so far the whole "70% VN 30% TRPG" thing isn't too inaccurate? But I'd say it's more 60/40. There's definitely room for battles when you're given the chance, but the beginning is pretty long. The Tutorial for battle is quick but the Tutorial for exploration and dialog choices is about a couple of hours long

As far as story, it's both typical and not typical for Digimon at all. 8 kids at a summer camp get trapped in another world, including resident goggle head, a brother and his younger sibling, the responsible one, etc- but this has a supernatural, vaguely religious and terrifying twist to it. Literally in the tutorial you see these devs aren't playing around with one of the most horrifying ways for a character to die- and again, this is the tutorial, maybe 10 minutes in.

The story and Characters are unsurprisingly going to carry the game for the most part. I mentioned that they're typecast pretty similarly to the Adventure cast, but they're not quite the same. Takuma is a lot more calm and chill than Tai, and his personality is more liquid, depending on choices. I think my favorite of the bunch is Minoru, who is somewhat a mix of Mimi, Sora, and Tai at the same time and is brimming with personality and meme potential. The best Digimon though is Aoi's partner, Labramon, who exhibits all of the expected traits of a doggo that loves you after just meeting you and having severe separation anxiety. I would like to push Ryo into a mud puddle though- he's a realistic character, mind you, but he's tsundere and a coward at the same time, which just makes him annoying.

There's choices to be made, but I'm not quite sure how they affect the story just yet. But they pop up depending on how much time you spend with a character, at points in the story to decide whether you fight or run, etc.

Because my friend keeps asking about monster taming elements in it compared to Cyber Sleuth- I would strongly advise to curb your expectations. For one, there's only 117 monsters in the game vs close to 400 in CS and HM. That, and recruiting is more like an SMT game, but a bit easier imo so far. I haven't gotten too deep yet, but I believe the evolution tree is also a lot more tailored to specific monsters and smaller.

As for the Visual Novel experience, it's not too hard to get into and there's actual gameplay elements too. Also there's a lot of voice acting (no dub) and the characters are actually animated in some places, so it's a bit like playing an anime.

Overall with first impressions, I'm very impressed. I was a little worried I wouldn't be into this, but it's not hard to pick up at all. But it is a lot of reading- I'm surprised that I'm actually okay with it sense I usually hate reading (I think the enlarged letters help a bunch), but if you're one of those people that complained about too much text in the Story games, you're gonna have a bad time. Like a REALLY bad one.

As far as my own gripes, I wish BAMCO would fire their localizers and get a new one, because every fucking game from them has sloppy typos or errors that would easily be fixed if they spent a little more time scanning for errors, and Survive is no exception- granted its not a ton so far, but it really takes me out of it when I have to stop and decipher what was meant. I can't remember an exact instance, but one was something like "He is ain't going there," but more complicated and harder for me with a reading disability to decipher.

Another gripe is that the game has long load times- which I thought would be fixed by swapping to a Switch cartridge instead of a PS4 disc, but nope. It's not Sonic 06 levels long, but still pretty irritating.

Then there's a lack of polish to controls. They work fine, but you'll definitely feel that using the stick in combat to set directions could be better.

But other than this, there's a lot, and I mean a LOT of soul here. They're taking a very different approach here compared to usual, but it's fun and I'd ask anyone on the fence to give it it's fair chance. In fact, if you would as a personal favor, consider at the least adding it to your wishlists so BAMCO will see the interest the west has in their games. Their marketing has been atrocious and they don't treat the series with the same respect they do towards their other games, so if more interest is generated, they'll follow the money!

Please give it a shot! I'm going to hold off on rating it because I'm only in part 1, but it's fun so far.